Monday

With the cyptocurrency market literally exploding every day, the world is steadily moving towards decentralization in almost every aspect of our lives. This decentralization trend is so strong it is affecting domains that were previously exclusively reserved for experts and official institutions. For example, in recent years, we have seen a surge in citizen science projets that aim to empower ordinary citizens by given them an opportunity to contribute to scientific advancements. Citizen science projects range from identifying exoplanets (e.g., Planet Hunters), to bug hunting. Yes, if you have seen an invasive bug and want to help scientists build a system that predicts pests' movements, you can do that at the Big Bug Hunt Project's page. Going back to the actual topic of this article, MIT's physicists have created a muon particle detector that anyone can build using affordable common electronic parts.

Saturday

When we try to picture what an alien living on Kepler-452b might look like, the first image that comes to our mind is that of a greenish creature with shiny big eyes and a giant brain. However, this impression is about to change as a new scientific study from the University of Oxford has shown that aliens might in fact be more similar to us than we think.

Tuesday

While the Kepler space telescope's data collecting ability was severely handicapped by the failure of two of its four reaction wheels on July 14 2012 and May 11 2013 respectively, it has certainly revolutionized the search for exoplanets with its discovery of more than 2300 confirmed exoplanets and another 4,496 unconfirmed alien worlds.

A new analysis of Kepler's data collected in its first few operational years preceding the wheel accident, has revealed the existence of 20 potential exoplanets that may actually be able to harbor alien life.

Thursday

One of the most fascinating attributes of science is that it keeps challenging our understandings of the universe as new ideas and concepts are constantly being introduced either to refine already existing theories or to dismiss past knowledge and build new notions from scratch. While this variable nature of science is often what makes it what it is, it can also render it a killjoy to some people, especially when it comes to debunking imaginative alien theories.

This is exactly what NASA did to the alien megastructure theory, which explains the atypical dimming of Tabby's star as a consequence of a giant technological creation built by an advanced civilization to harvest the star's energy.

Friday

The Cassini spacecraft has just sent its farewell gift to NASA's scientists after venturing into Saturn's atmosphere early Friday morning. The gift came in the form of a set of images the probe took before performing a suicidal dive into the ringy planet.